Ex-Radical Gives Up in Fatal ’70 Bank Robbery : Crime: ‘Most-wanted’ fugitive pleads guilty to armed robbery and manslaughter. She lived quietly in Oregon.

Seeking to reconcile lives past and present, Alice Metzinger emerged Wednesday from a pleasant family existence in the Oregon sunshine and strode 23 years late into the arms of authority and a jail cell in Boston as fugitive Katherine Ann Power--a former student radical long on the FBI’s “most-wanted” list for a fatal bank robbery.

She was arraigned in federal and state courts and held without bail after offering a story of flight and growth and remorse, of years of guilty normalcy in small-town Oregon and of a quick reunion with the family she had left behind.

Now a stepmother, a teacher, chef, businesswoman and the wife of an accountant, Power, 44, sat primly in court and answered a magistrate’s questions Wednesday in a strong, clear voice. Under terms of a surrender bargain more than a year in the making, she pleaded guilty to two counts of armed robbery and one count of manslaughter. She also agreed to plead guilty to charges of stealing federal property.

Law enforcement officials had sought Power for more than two decades, 14 years of which she remained on the “most-wanted” roster, in connection with the Sept. 23, 1970, robbery of a branch of the State Street Bank & Trust Co. here. Boston police officer Walter Schroeder, 42, was killed and five radicals fled with $36,000 in that crime.

A group calling itself Direct Action was behind the robbery, and its motive was said to be an attack on the American financial Establishment as a protest against the Vietnam War and the U.S. military invasion of Cambodia, an attorney for the fugitive said.

Power was an A student at Brandeis University at the time, and prosecutors charged that she drove one of the getaway cars. She was the last of the five participants to face justice. Her lawyer said that in 1970 Power had fallen under the influence of Direct Action’s charismatic student leader, who was attending Brandeis on furlough from Walpole State Prison.

The charge of stealing federal property stemmed from the 1970 theft of guns and ammunition from the Massachusetts National Guard armory in Newburyport.

Her surrender was facilitated by the work of a transcontinental network of attorneys and her own painful, gradual steps to bring one life into register with another. On Sunday the process became irreversible as she gathered with friends in the west-central Oregon town of Corvallis for a farewell party and then flew east to be reunited for the first time with her parents to look through scrapbooks and make a family video.

Her mother, Marjorie Power, 71, now of Grand Junction, Colo., said the family had not known whether she was dead or alive until contacted this summer by one of the fugitive’s attorneys.

The reunion was described as “extraordinarily emotional.”

Then, just after 6 a.m., private Alice became public Katherine as she gave herself over to waiting Boston police and FBI agents. She tried to explain herself to America in a written statement:

“I am surrendering to authorities today to answer charges that arise from a series of acts 23 years ago. I am here to plead guilty to those charges and I am prepared to accept whatever consequences the legal system will impose.”

She said she had acted as she had because of “the deep and violent crisis that the Vietnam War created in our land. . . .

“The illegal acts that I committed arose not from any desire for personal gain but from a deep philosophical and spiritual commitment that, if a wrong exists, one must take active steps to stop it, regardless of the consequences to oneself in comfort or security.

“Though at the time those actions seemed the correct course, they were in fact naive and unthinking.”

Power had been in therapy and was said to be taking medication for depression. “Leaving my son, my husband and my friends to enter prison is not easy. But I know that I must answer this accusation from the past in order to live with full authenticity in the present. . . . I am now learning to live with openness and truth, rather than shame and hiddenness.”

Attorney Rikki J. Kleiman said many factors bore down on Power and brought her to unmask herself, not the least of which was her 14-year-old stepson, Jamie, who was asking who his grandparents are.

Power could face a maximum sentence of life in prison for armed robbery and 20 years for manslaughter. A five-year term resulting from the separate federal charges will be served concurrently with her other sentence as part of the plea bargain, whose complete conditions were not disclosed.

“It is anticipated she will do some significant time in jail,” Power’s attorney said. The lawyer emphasized that Power was not at the scene of Schroeder’s shooting but accepted responsibility for actions that “may have contributed” to his slaying.

“She does feel an abiding and deep personal guilt for his death,” the attorney said.

Of the other four involved in the bank robbery-murder, convicted triggerman William Gilday Jr. is serving a life term and appealing his conviction. Stanley R. Bond died in 1972 when a bomb he was building in prison detonated.

Susan M. Saxe, who was believed to have spent time as a fugitive with Power, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served five years before being paroled in 1982. Robert Valeri, who admitted his role in the bank heist, testified for the government and was sentenced to 25 years. He has been paroled.

Power was described by friends in Oregon as accomplished in the culinary arts, an avid sports hunter, devoted wife and parent, a poet, a good listener, a private person, a feminist and someone willing to speak up for the rights of others.

She lived for the last 14 years in the west-central portion of the state, most recently in the Willamette Valley community of Lebanon, 11 miles off Interstate 5.

During the more than half of her life she spent as a fugitive, Power pursued interests in food and accumulated a rich and loyal cadre of friends who knew nothing of her past--except that she never spoke of it. Most recently she was a consultant who helped establish M’s Tea & Coffee House, a vegetarian restaurant in Corvallis, and she worked as its start-up chef. Previously, she was a partner with another woman in the Napoli Restaurant & Bakery, a Southern Italian restaurant in Eugene, where she helped devise the menu, cooked, waited on tables, washed dishes and put in 60 to 70 hours a week.

She also taught cooking and nutrition classes in the culinary arts program at Linn Benton Community College in Albany on and off from 1985 to 1992. The dean of college services praised her as an “outstanding performer” with students and faculty.

Her colleagues in these communities said Power had been increasingly bothered by feelings of guilt and had been in therapy. In recent months, she began to confide her secret to those around her--a process that culminated last Sunday in a sad, tear-filled and hopeful farewell party at the Corvallis home of a friend.

“Each of us gave her something--little goodby presents. And we said we were going to hold on to these presents so she would come back, so she would not leave us like she had to leave behind her friends and family before,” said Lynette Adkins, whom Power was training to be the new chef at M’s.

At the farewell, with Jamie at her side, Power read a poem she had written. As remembered by those who attended, she expressed hope that she would be regarded as a person who made a mistake, not as a bad person.

Reportedly, Power confided her past to her son only a month ago. He was said to be one of the few people who was not emotional at the goodby party.

In her farewell poem, Power also spoke of her sadness that she would never again be able to go bird hunting, since felons are not permitted to own firearms. “She said that when she returned she would have to walk in the forests and mountains and learn to fish, just as her husband, Ron, had taught her how to walk in the hills and deserts and hunt,” Adkins said.

Friends said that hunting and gardening were connected to her absorption in food.

Paula Scharf was Power’s partner at the Italian restaurant in Eugene.

“Alice was an intelligent, caring--a moral and ethical person,” Scharf said.

Did she seem to be a person burdened?

“I knew there was a burden there but I had no idea what. My only indication was that there was something in her past because she never had contact with her family,” Scharf said.

Not the least of those surprised at her surrender were local Oregon law enforcement officials. In Lebanon, police dispatcher Marge Kelsay said Power lived just outside of the town of 10,500 and only once had contact with authorities, in 1987 when she reported a theft from her car.

What did the chief of police think at learning that a former 10-most-wanted fugitive had been living under his nose?

“I don’t know. He took the day off and told me to handle the calls,” the dispatcher said.

Twenty miles to the east in Corvallis--on Wednesday morning even as the story was being broadcast across the nation--the police dispatcher said the name Katherine Ann Power rang no bells.

Lt. Gary Boldizsar spoke for the department: “My reaction is that we have between 50,000 and 80,000 people here every day. There are bound to be several that are wanted for something, little or big.”

Goldman reported from Boston and Balzar from Seattle.